His dagger slashed across her cheek, a quick, sharp pain, the hilt hitting hard enough that she twisted to the side and nearly lost her balance. His other fist flew toward her face, and she knocked it away with a scythe, drawing a deep cut on his forearm. But as blood flowed from the cut, he didn’t even seem to notice—he circled away from the flames, two daggers in his hands now, a wall of smoke at his back and nothing else.
“You refuse to see me as anything but evil, don’t you?” he asked, taking a step closer to her—a sudden desperation deepening the blue of his eyes. “You think I couldn’t possibly want to help our home.”
“You’re destroying everything you claim to care about for a chance at power,” she said, advancing rather than backing up—not caring how close range or risky it was, as long as he saw in her eyes that this was the last fight they would ever have. “Being the last person standing in this city won’t make you good for it, Kohl.”
“And so what does that make you?” he asked as she came to a stop in front of him, both of their weapons down at their sides. Despite the roar of flames, she heard his voice clearly. “If you try to kill me now, at least it will prove you’re no better than me.”
She let out a sharp laugh. “I never said I was. But I’m not doing this for you, Kohl, I’m doing this for Kosín.”
A heartbeat later, she met his blades with her own, a clang of metal reverberating through her bones as she gritted her teeth to hold him there. As she pushed him back toward the wall of flames, she knew she was gaining ground, her adrenaline racing as if a crowd were watching and cheering her on. But it was only the two of them. She fought back, forcing an opening—she could strike and kill him there.
But she paused and he slashed a blade across her arm. A look of resignation entered his eyes then. There was no going back from this. And then his fist flew toward her face.
The punch hit her in the jaw and she fell back, vision blacking out for a moment until she landed hard on the ground—her scythes flew from her hands and skidded toward the fire. The flames were so close now, she smelled her hair burning. She was going to die here, alone except for Kohl standing over her body as it turned to ash.
As she tried to roll to the side to regroup at a distance from him, a sharp pain swept across her upper back—a blade had cut through the skin.
She rolled to her knees, ignoring the searing pain on her back, but stopped in place when Kohl approached her, his gun raised and aimed at her face.
He placed his finger on the trigger, but he didn’t fire. Hesitation flickered through his eyes, that doubt that always appeared when he came close to destroying her.
In one quick move, she knocked the gun out of his hands.
Pulling a diamond-edged dagger from the brace across her chest, she pressed the blade under his ribs and directly into his heart. He gasped, his hands trying to grab on to her wrist, but his strength faltered by the second.
“Aina,” he gasped out.
As Kohl tried and failed to say more, Aina thought only of Teo. His eyes as the life faded out of them, his last words, and the way his head rested on her shoulder. She plunged the knife in deeper.
“You told me to watch while my target’s life fades from their eyes,” she whispered as they both sank to their knees, his body leaning heavily on her dagger. The smoke gathered around them in wisps and curls, until the rest of the battle faded away. “You told me to check that they are truly dead. So I’m watching and waiting, Kohl, because you taught me well.”
His blood-covered hand moved to his jacket with the last bit of strength he had. He lifted it aside, and she thought he was going to draw another gun—he always had multiple on him. Without wasting another moment, she twisted her blade out of his chest and drew it across his throat in one smooth movement. Blood poured down her wrist and arm. The light left his eyes right before he slumped to the ground.
She stepped back quickly, as if expecting him to rise again. Her hands trembled as she looked down at Kohl’s blood on them, and then at the dead man below.
Dead. Kohl is dead.
She shook her head, not quite understanding or believing those words. She drew in a shuddering breath, remembering then the moment when she was fourteen and nearly passed out from inhaling glue on the roof of the Dom. It had been hard to breathe then too, like she was suffocating on smoke even with none around. He’d held her up, concern in his eyes, and the next day he’d promised to give her a tradehouse of her own when she was ready. That hope for safety had kept her alive for so long.
And as much as she’d known he’d needed to die for the city to be safe, she knew that his words were true: We’re more alike than you’ve ever admitted. All they’d both ever wanted was hope for a future, and in this city, that was as elusive as smoke to hold on to.
After a few seconds passed, she lifted aside his jacket to see what he’d been trying to uncover.
Instead of a gun, it was a glass vial, a familiar one, with a milky liquid inside.
The antidote.
Or perhaps it was the fake. Since Arman had killed the Sentinel himself, and Kohl had used one of the antidotes to spare Aina from the poison on the smuggler’s ship, she had no idea what had happened to the other antidotes and poisons. Frowning, she plucked the vial from his jacket and tucked it into the pouch at her belt.
The raging fire covered all other sounds beyond them. Right after he’d drawn his gun, he’d hesitated. His vision of them ruling together had been shattered and he’d known he was about to die. She’d always thought she’d hear his voice after his death, taunting her and threatening to come back, but right now … she heard only her own voice. There was an empty, ghost-like space in her mind that he had always occupied, ever since she was eight years old, before she even knew his name. Even now, when she closed her eyes, she could see shadows in that room, demons that would use his voice again if they ever wanted to get to her.
She opened her eyes. Maybe the shadows would always be there, but she no longer feared them—they were a part of her too.
40
Turning away from Kohl’s body and with the fire at her back, Aina faced a wall of smoke ahead of her. Cinders latched on to her hair and singed her skin. Panic flooded her briefly; she couldn’t see the ladder the others had used to escape. As far as she could tell, she was the only person still in the mine pit and breathing.
But as she swallowed, her throat itched and burned, and ash got in her eyes. If she didn’t get out of here now, she wouldn’t be breathing much longer either.
She searched the ground for her scythes, but they must have been swallowed by the fire already. Shielding her face as much as she could, she ran back in the direction she’d come from, willing the smoke to clear. She choked on it, fearing she’d be buried here. The walls of the mine would fall and trap her if she didn’t get out soon. More than once, she tripped over debris or bodies, scraping her palms and knees on the ground when she caught herself. After a few more minutes, though, her hand reached out and touched something solid—the rock wall of the pit. She clung to it for a moment, wondering if she might be able to climb it if she couldn’t find the ladder. The smoke billowed around her with a gust of wind, and she covered her eyes with her arm. When the wind died down, the path in front of her had cleared of smoke. The rung of a ladder flashed in the light of the flames, ten feet away.
She sprinted to it and jumped onto the first rung, crying out when she nearly slipped right off—her hands were slick with blood. With a blaze of heat at her back, she climbed quickly, keeping her grip on the rungs as tight as she could.
She kept her gaze upward as she climbed, searching for a pocket of sky among the smoke. She was almost there. Ten feet, five feet—when a hand reached down to pull her up.
Grasping it, she hauled herself up the last few rungs and collapsed on the grass, coughing and trying to blink the smoke out of her eyes. “Mariya took the other soldiers and the Inosen,” said Tannis, holding up Aina by the shoulders. “We couldn’t
leave without you.”
After another moment, her vision had cleared enough to take in the scene in front of her, and she breathed in deeply, not caring that the air was still thick with smoke—at least she wasn’t in that pit anymore.
Under a pale dawn sky, the survivors had gathered. More bodies littered the grass between here and the safe house one hundred feet away. The two tradehouses and about fifty Kaiyanis soldiers were gathered a short distance from the fire, checking for injuries among their fighters. Mirran and Tannis stood next to her, uncomfortably close to the flames, and Aina felt a rush of gratitude toward them; they didn’t have to stay here for her, but they had.
“Aina,” Mirran said sharply. “Is that your blood?”
When Aina looked down, she stiffened. Dark red, glistening blood still coated her neck, torso, and arms.
“If that were mine, I’d be dead,” she said, shaking her head, then looked toward the burning mines—was his body burning there now, disappearing forever? “Most of it is Kohl’s.”
“So the Dom…” Tannis said, her eyes widening.
Aina didn’t answer her unspoken question. The Dom might be theirs now, but that no longer mattered. If Bautix ended up taking the city, nothing would be theirs at all, because it would all be gone. “You said Mariya took the other soldiers and the Inosen? She must be on her way to the Tower now. Where are Raurie, Ryuu, and Lill?”
“They went with her,” Tannis said in a strained tone. “None of the other Inosen who are able to use magic have fought with it before, so they had to be there. We can go through the same entrance Mirran and I used earlier.”
As they walked to the rest of their group, Aina checked her weapons and injuries, noting she’d lost a dagger and two scythes somewhere along the way. Her left arm was still heavy to move around, but adrenaline had carried her through the fight with Kohl and it would get her through the rest of this. The cut Kohl had made on her back still stung, and she knew she’d have to treat it soon or risk infection. Shallow cuts lined her palms and stung when she touched them, but she could still grip a knife handle. For now, it had to be good enough.
Once they gathered the tradehouses and Kaiyanis soldiers, they began their march to the Tower. As soon as the trees cleared ahead of them and the Tower came into view, Aina’s exhaustion disappeared, and a new energy replaced it.
Rising thirty stories above the land with sharp spires and turrets, the Tower had always been a source of fear and inspiration for her. She imagined it was somewhat like how the Inosen, including her parents, viewed the Mothers. The morning sun shining above gave her a brief surge of hope. This battle wasn’t over, and the city wasn’t doomed, nor abandoned, nor lost. And they would see it through to the end.
They all moved northward, cutting across the cemetery toward the Tower. As they did, raindrops dotted the land in front of them. The air grew thick with humidity as everything turned gray and misted.
No Diamond Guards stood in front of the Tower or at the side entrance she could see from here, which sent an eerie chill down Aina’s spine. Was it already taken? Were they too late?
Gulping, she gestured for Tannis to lead the way. Following Tannis at the front of the group, Aina searched the grounds for any sign of Diamond Guards approaching to join the fight inside the Tower. They curved around the side of the building and all went quiet except the wind whistling past them and the lashing rain.
Tannis squinted up at the slick wall of the Tower for a moment, then pointed at handholds set along the side. They led twenty feet up into a turret jutting off the side of the building. Aina thought she could make out an opening that had been carved into it, similar to what she’d used to navigate the caves underneath the Tower. The memory of the chill in the water and the rocks that had collided into her made her shiver as she approached the wall and grasped on to the handholds.
Raindrops hit her face and slicked her hands as she climbed. A few times, she nearly slipped, her heart jumping to her throat as she did. She’d never led so many people into a fight before, but nearly one hundred followed her and Tannis now into the Tower. The thought of failing all of them scared her—she’d already failed the recruits at the Dom, and she’d failed Teo. But she kept the image of sliding her knife into Kohl’s chest front and center in her mind. He was gone because of her. Bautix didn’t stand a chance.
The handholds led to a cramped room barely large enough to stand in, with only a narrow crevice cut into the wall for them to step into. Aina went first, needing to turn her body to the side to fit. She strained her ears to hear what might be happening on the other side of this path. The farther along she got, the more clearly sounds of fighting from within the Tower reached her, distant shouts and the clang of metal. Her breathing came more shallowly, her pulse racing in anticipation of joining the fray.
The path led to a large pantry, with boxes of food stacked along each wall. As her group filed in, she squinted through the darkness to find Tannis and Mirran among all the other heads of blue hair.
“We should go to wherever most of his men will be concentrated so we can take out as many as possible at once,” Aina said when she found them. “I think it will be on the lower floors, since the upper ones are smaller and there’s not enough room for so many fighters.”
“The ballroom would be the best place for a battle,” Tannis said in a low voice.
“It’s probably a bloodbath,” Mirran said, holding out a hand for Tannis to pass her a pistol—and then she smiled. “Let’s join it.”
Aina clearly remembered the ballroom where she, Teo, Ryuu, and Raurie had stopped Bautix’s plans last month. A balcony ringed it with curtains drawn, where she and Tannis had fought Kohl that same night.
“I know where to start,” Aina said, and gestured for them all to follow her.
Torches were the only light in the hall they ran through, their boots against the marble floor the only sound. Echoes of shouts grew louder the deeper they penetrated the Tower’s walls. Every minute, Aina expected one of Bautix’s men to turn the corner and pull a gun on them, but their hunch was right that most of the fighting was concentrated in the ballroom and the other open areas of the lower floors.
Soon, they sped into a hallway where a stairwell continued downward, and another path extended straight toward the balcony surrounding the ballroom.
Aina turned to face the soldiers and they came to a stop, silent as night as they waited for instructions. For a moment, she said nothing, hearing only the din from below. Blades clashed and gunshots fired. Glass broke and people screamed. It would have terrified most people, but right now, all she wanted was to join them.
She needed to be in the thick of it, defending her home and fighting to the last breath.
“Mirran, take the soldiers to line around the balcony and start taking down Bautix’s men through the folds of the curtains. Make sure they’re careful who they hit; we don’t want them to take out our own people by mistake.”
As Mirran gathered the soldiers with a quick shout in Kaiyanis, Aina raced down the steps that led to the ballroom, with Tannis and the two tradehouses at her side. With bated breath, Aina led the way to the door and drew a dagger.
It was a massacre inside.
Diamond Guards all fought the same way—in methodical, efficient movements that worked well enough but were obvious to a trained eye. But now they fought one another, the ones who were still loyal to Mariya against those who’d turned to Bautix’s side. They were evenly matched, neither side giving ground even as the floor beneath them grew slick with blood.
Bullets flew from the balcony surrounding the ballroom; the soldiers with Mirran taking down as many of Bautix’s men as they could. The ones with Mariya fought as well, facing the Jackals who littered the ballroom and striking them down without hesitation. All of the Jackals were new and inexperienced; they dropped with quick shots to the head, blades in their stomachs and knives through their throats. Mariya stood on the stage in the distance, surrounded by a grou
p of Inosen who’d used their magic at some point to raise stone pillars from the ground to cover them in a shield. One at a time, they each used their remaining diamonds to strike at Bautix’s men in the crowd. Blood poured out of their eyes and ears and mouths until they collapsed, painting the floor red in front of them.
Aina locked eyes with Tannis for a moment and felt the same energy there; they had a chance to win this. Turning to the tradehouses, Aina pointed to a few of them and yelled to be heard over the gunshots and screams. “You three, stand at the door and don’t let any of Bautix’s men out. We’re outnumbering them now and we need to keep it that way.”
She and Tannis ran into the thick of it with the rest of the tradehouses at their back. They ran forward together, clearing a path in the center of the ballroom with their weapons and then turning to face the rest of it, their backs to one another.
A Jackal turned to face Aina, his blade swinging toward her. She dodged it easily and slashed across his chest with her dagger. As he fell back, she slammed him in the back with the hilt of her weapon so he collapsed to the ground. With one more cut through the back of his neck, he stopped moving.
His blood spilled over the floor. The diamonds underneath the glass floor glittered in the ballroom’s lights, even with all the fighting and the tight press of bodies engaged in battle.
As she, Tannis, and the tradehouses cleared out the center of the ballroom, the fighting began to spread to the corners. When Aina cut down one of the ex–Diamond Guards, she finally spotted Raurie, Ryuu, and Lill at the nearest corner.
“Aina! We’re nearly out of diamonds,” Raurie said when Aina ran to join them. Between all the moving bodies and the flashing weapons, bits of the glittering diamond floor were visible. “Do you know if all of those were actually used during the war?”
“Not sure. I think they collected any diamonds they found on Inosen, no matter if they were used or not. A lot of them are probably fine.”
Shadow City Page 32